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Summaries
Johan Goudsblom
Change generates Change
From biological evolution to social-cultural development
The co-evolution o f hominids and other species has been a necessary condition for the
development o f human society and culture. Since the rise o f Homo sapiens, however,
the major changes in human behaviour have resulted from intra-specific social pro­
cesses. In trying to explain why certain new forms of behaviour ‘stuck’ and became
lasting, we are well advised to look for shifts in power balances. Those new forms of
behaviour (‘innovations’ as the cultural equivalent o f ‘mutations’) became lasting which
either yielded more favourable power positions or provided accomodation (no matter
how miserable) to power positions that became less favourable. The accelerating pace
of social change can be seen from this perspective to be generated by the increasing
pressures of intra-specific competition.
Johan M.G. van der Dennen
Selfish Cooperation and (Violent) Intergroup Competition in Hominoid Evolution
This article argues that in nature cooperation evolves mainly because it pays (in the
evolutionary currency o f reproductive success); that cooperation evolves in order to
better compete with other cooperating (survival) units; and that on all levels of societal
complexity cooperation and competition (in dyadic or polyadic coalitions) are intertwi­
ned and interdigitated. Examples o f these principles in mammalian and especially
primate species are presented. The reciprocally reinforcing roles of intergroup competi­
tion and intragroup cooperation in the hominid evolutionary trajectory are also
discussed.
Joanna Swabe
Human Social Evolution and Animal Exploitation through Artificial
Selection
This article examines the impact of human social evolution on the development o f other
species. Working from the neo-Darwinian view of evolution, it explores the idea that
humans have in effect functioned as a ‘chance’ element in the evolution o f particular
species. It suggests that the manner in which the human species itself has evolved in
time, also through natural selection and chance has played a decisive role in the
evolution of other animals. The article thus considers how human evolutionary success,
cultural development and expansion into new environmental realms led to fundamental
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changes in the relationship between species. Furthermore, it highlights the increasing
differentiation between humans and other animals, focusing on the domestication
process and how human beings have consistently exercised their influence on the
genetic development of other species. The discussion spans a relatively ‘short’ period
of time - which is brief at least in terms of both evolution and human history extending from the earliest and most significant cultural innovations made by our
ancestors to the present-day genetic manipulation of other species.
Bart van Heerikhuizen
Social Evolutionism during the formative Years o f Sociology
The development o f the science of society in its early stages and the development o f
social evolutionism are closely interrelated. The 18th century concept o f human
progress is treated in this article as the central idea out o f which 19th century biologi­
cally inspired social evolutionism arose. Condorcet is described as the most important
precursor o f the evolutionist theories of Saint-Simon and Comte, the man who coined
the word sociology. The most important author however is the founding father of
sociology, Herbert Spencer, whose subtle social evolutionism was closely related to the
ideas Darwin proposed in biology in the same period. The turn of the century Marxists
who propagated ‘scientific socialism’ were in many cases as devoted to Spencer as they
were to orthodox marxism. In the Netherlands the first defenders of sociology as an
academic discipline were all social evolutionists. It is remarkable, given these begin­
nings of the sociological enterprise, that sociologists in the 20th century distanced
themselves rapidly from social evolutionism. Recently a new interest in evolutionism
can be discerned amongst sociologists.
Bert Theunissen
Social Darwinism
Some remarks about an ambiguous concept
Since it was introduced, in the second half o f the nineteenth century, the term Social
Darwinism has, as is customary with long-lived ‘isms’, acquired various meanings.
Apart from its polemical use, it has come to cover a wide range of politial and social
ideas which, in one way or another, all derived their authority from the fact that they
were generally accepted as Darwin’s evolutionary views. This article presents an
historiographic survey of the different meanings of Social Darwinism and of the
different ways in which historians have used the concept. I show that Social Darwinism
was never a unified and narrowly circumscribed movement or ideology. This is hardly
surprising, considering that even Darwin’s views on the matter are hard to pin down
exactly, and that ideas on the nature o f the evolutionary process have undergone
considerable changes over time. I discuss a recently published argument to the contrary,
which claims that the term can be given a strict definition which enables us to
recognise, among the widely varying views o f social evolution, a category of ‘real’
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Social Darwinists. I argue that this attempt is misguided and a-historical. It unites
thinkers who, historically speaking, had little in common and never formed a group or
movement. Social Darwinism was, and always will be, a typical ‘ism’, a convenient
collective term for historians, not a clearly defined historical phenomenon.
Cor Hermans
Darwinian Fear and Hope in Sociology, 1880-1914
Social Pathologists and Social Engineers
The sociological concept o f ‘social selection’, or simply ‘selection’, is derived from
Charles Darwin’s ‘natural selection’. Both terms, although inspired bij Darwinian
biology, took on a meaning of their own. For several sociologists, selection became the
precondition of social regeneration, while the absence of selection in modern industria­
lized mass society, in which the weak and unhealthy were no longer eliminated, was
seen as the cause of a whole range o f social pathologies. The discipline o f ’social
pathology’, cosidered to be a promising new branch o f social science (Paul von
Lilienfeld), diagnosed the actual social conditions in organismic, biologistic and
medical terms. Social pathology was linked to the evolutionary pessimism, that
manifested itself after 1880 in the works of Wallace, Huxley, Lankester and Galton.
They feared degeneration would result from the fact that natural selection did not work
properly in modem, cultured society, as a result of which ‘the unfit’ could reproduce
prolifically.
August Weismann’s neo Darwinism, with its pan-selectionism fiercly denying the
inheritance o f acquired characteristics, enhanced the pessimistic tendency in sociology,
as can be seen in the work o f George Chatterton-Hill, Benjamin Kidd, Wilhelm
Schallmayer and John Berry Haycraft. Weismann’s concept o f panmixia was at the
heart of several social pathological analyses, meaning that non-selective intermixture
would inevitably lead to degeneration. The social and economic parasitism in modem
capitalistic society, its extreme individualism, its social disintegration leading to
increases in crime, alcoholism, syphilis, mental disease and the suicides rate, were all
seen as the result of panmixia and the ensuing racial degeneration.
However, these pessimistic diagnoses were combined with a scientific optimism that
was meant to demonstrate the importance o f sociology as a politically useful science.
The scientific policies that were suggested often amounted to eugenics. The social
‘efficiency’ that was needed in a competitive world, could only be reached if ‘the
wellfare of the race’ would be accepted as the highest principle o f all social actions
(Chatterton-Hill).
The Social Darwinism emerging from these sociopathological writings is quite different
from the traditional picture of this disputed phenomenon. It is a Sociological Darwi­
nism, that is clearly critical of the disintegrating tendencies o f individualism, o f the
fierce competion for money in modem capitalism, stressing the importance o f social
integration. Nevertheless, because of its social biological and eugenical content it can
be described as an ‘unsociological sociology’.
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Randall Collins
The Mullidimensionality o f Social Evolution and the Historical Pathways o f Asia and
the West
Evolutionary theory is a weak model for human social change; species evolution is a
history of proliferating species into specialized niches, whereas human social change
is recurrently niche-obliterating, through conquest, destruction, and imitation. The
concept o f progress is a human concept based on the dominance of some social forms
over others, whereas biological species are all equally well adapted to their niches. The
multidimensionality of social change is illustrated by the problem of whether the
European West was more advanced than the East, especially China and Japan, a
challenge raised by Gunder Frank. Breaking social advance into subdimensions within
economic, political and cultural dimensions, we find there are numerous mechanisms
o f social change with leading sectors in many parts of the world. A central dimension
of change has been shift along the continuum from patrimonial-household structures to
bureaucratic organization, contributing to capitalist productivity, state control, and
secularized cultural markets. The shift was promoted by religious organizations,
especially celibate monasteries, which helped promote entrepreneurial capitalism in
China and Japan, just as Christian monasteries did in Europe. A combination of
conditions, still not well understood, led to a relatively brief historical moment, ca.
1800-1970, when Europe was dominant over the rest o f the world.
Nico Wilterdink
The Development o f Socio-Economic Inequality in the World
Evolutionary trends and mechanisms
The article takes as a starting-point the huge income inequalities in the present-day
world and purports to explain them from an evolutionary perspective. New calculations
on trends in international income inequality (between countries, based on PPP estimates)
and global income inequality (the sum o f inequalities between and within countries) for
1950-1998 are presented. On the whole, international and global income inequality
continued to grow in this period. This conclusion has to be amended, however, if one
compares different subperiods and different measures of inequality. The Gini-coefficients of international and global income inequality diminished in the 1980s due to the
strong economic growth in some Asian countries, China in particular. On average the
gap between rich and poor countries in survival chances (indicated by food consumpti­
on and life expectancy) diminished on the average in second half of the 20th century.
The trends in this period are regarded as part of a long-term evolutionary development.
Three stages in this development are distinguished; a first stage in which socio­
economic inequalities within and between societies were small; a second stage, starting
with the domestication of plants and animals, in which socio-economic inequalities
between and (even more) within societies increased; and a third stage, starting with
mechanical industrialization, in which socio-economic inequalities between societies
grew much larger and became more striking than those within (national) societies. A
fourth, hypothetical stage is added, starting in the second half of the 20th century, in
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which socio-economic inequalities between countries are beginning to diminish
according to some indications. The long-term development is explained by positing a
number of basic mechanisms: the differential accumulation of power resources,
exploitation, social adaptation and cultural hierarchization as well as selective diffusion
of power resources, increasing interdependence, and cultural dehierarchization. Whereas
the first four mechanisms explain growing inequality, the last two imply diminishing
inequality; selective diffusion can work both ways. The relative importance o f these
mechanisms depends on basic conditions which change in the course o f social evoluti­
on.
Jelle Visser
Evolutionary and ecological theories o f organization applied to trade union develop­
ment
Following a brief discussion o f evolutionary and ecological theory, as applied in organi­
zational sociology and economics, the author takes the development and restructuring
process of Dutch trade unions during the past hundred year as his empirical case. For
the population of trade unions this development can be described and analysed as an
evolutionary process of differential birth, death and survival rates of various routines
of collective action of workers embodied by different types of unions. The evolutionary
approach helps to understand the seemingly spontaneous, unplanned, wave-like and
survival driven merger process through which unions and union leaders prepare for ‘life
beyond death’. The main selection principle appears to be the search for ‘economy of
scale’, but vicarious selectors like prestige, power and pensions o f union officials
appear to be at work as well.
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